Jimmy Jellinek

An award-winning crime reporter turned magazine editor, Jellinek spent his early career in the pulpy swamp of men’s publishing, working as the editor-in-chief for less than illustrious titles like FHM, Stuff and Maxim during the heyday of the lad magazine when these rags sold millions of copies and had an indelible effect on the culture at large.

Jellinek’s work as a journalist was featured in Vanity Fair, NPR, Harpers, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Vice, Time, Rolling Stone, Spin, Arena, The Face, The Guardian, The New York Post and GQ. His article for Spin Magazine on the riots at Woodstock 1999 won him numerous editorial awards and was the subject of a docuseries from early broadband cult darling Heavy.com. In addition, Jellinek served as a creative producer for MTV’s Wildboyz, the wildly popular spinoff to the iconic Jackass franchise. Accompanying the crew to Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda, where he contracted malaria and was nearly mauled by an elephant. In 2008, Jellinek was named Editorial Director of Playboy serving as the brand’s chief content officer for seven years; steering the brand back to its roots as a cultural and literary powerhouse; winning the magazine over 70 awards from “Magazine of the Year,” to Funniest Cover from the American Society of Magazine Editors for his work with the Simpson’s Matt Groening in featuring Marge on the now legendary cover.

In 2016 Jellinek was recruited to join the world of eSports and YouTube influencers as the chief creative officer for FaZe Clan, where he built out the entirety of their production capability and created hundreds of hours of programming while living with the gamers in a giant house in the Hollywood Hills. In 2019 Jellinek co-wrote the iconic scripted podcast series Bear and a Banjo with creator Jared Gutstadt. Produced by T Bone Burnett and featuring original music from Bob Dylan, the series was a worldwide #1 hit. In 2020, Jellinek joined Gutstadt at Audio Up as its chief creative officer. In this capacity, Jellinek has written, produced and directed over 15 #1 series for Audio Up including Halloween in Hell featuring Machine Gun Kelly, Iann Dior and 24kGoldn and serves as the writer and producer for Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen the wildly successful series from Donald Trump’s former fixer (Apple Top 30 with 15 Million downloads.) He lives in Los Angeles with his two cats George and Dennis Quaid.